His One and Only(65)

To her surprise, he caught her before she could stumble more than a few steps. “You okay?” he asked, pulling her up to his chest.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “Thanks. I’ll just be getting on my way. I’m already...” She started to extract herself from their unexpected embrace, but he held her there, his arms as strong as a pair of steel bands around her. “…late.”

He smiled. “It feels like you’ve gained a little more weight. I like it.”

Josie looked around. A few patrons had stopped to stare. But Beau acted like there was nothing the least bit strange about how he was holding on to her.

“I’m steady now,” she told him. “You can let me go.”

“But how about if I don’t want to?” he asked. “How about if I never want to let you go?”

Her heart started to soar, but then she remembered, “Weren’t you just hugged up on somebody a few minutes ago? A really, really good-looking somebody?”

He chuckled.

“What?”

“His plan worked. You got jealous. It’s just it wasn’t over the right person.”

“I’m not jealous,” she said, even though she totally was. “I was just wondering why you’re talking about never wanting to let me go when you obviously were just hugged up on somebody else.”

“Man, you sound angry. Was she that cute?”

Now she really started struggling to get free. “Let me go,” she said. “Let me go right now, Beau Prescott.”

“No,” he said. “Not until you promise to marry me.”

She stopped struggling. “What?”

And he cursed. “I’m not doing this right.”

“What did you just say?”

“You should have been here earlier. I had this whole speech about how much I love you, about how you make me a better person. But now we’re here, and it sounds like I’m threatening you, but I’m not. Josie, I love you. That’s all. More than I ever loved anybody else, ever.” He reached up and stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “So even though, I know Prescotts don’t apologize, here’s me, Beau Prescott, telling you, Josie Witherspoon, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the things I said, the way I treated you. Sorrier than I’ve ever been about anything in my entire life. And I’m sorry I can’t leave you alone, but I want you to—no, scratch that, darlin’, I need you to spend the rest of your life with me.”

She stared up at him, her eyes glistening with tears. That speech had been so beautiful, she could barely believe it had come out of Beau Prescott’s mouth. Yet even though his voice shook when he spoke--and this was likely the first apology he’d made to anyone in over twenty years--there was just one more thing she had to see to truly believe he meant what he’d just said.

His eyes.

She tentatively reached up and removed his sunglasses.

He let her, but his arms stiffened around her waist as she took them off, which let her know he wasn’t wholly unaffected by what she was doing.

She found his beautiful silver eyes filled with tears, just like hers. And to her surprise, the dark pupils inside of them shrank under the lobby’s bright lights. “Have you gotten some of your sight back?”

“No, my eyes still respond to light, but they don’t relay a picture to my brain. That’s how my condition works.” She could almost see the effort it was taking for him to hold still under her scrutiny. “I decided to make a donation to UAB’s Department of Ophthalmology, and I’ve got a few other neurosurgeons looking at my file, but as far as I know, I’m going to be blind until further notice. I know that’s not ideal. But I promise, I won’t ever let it affect my ability to love you the way you deserve to be loved ever again.”

She regarded him for several seconds before saying. “You’re right. I don’t like you as much now as when you had your sight.”

His grip around his waist slackened. “Oh,” he said, the expression on his face going from hopeful to devastated to resigned in the space of a few seconds.

But then she said, “I like you way better. Way, way better.” She smiled up at him. “Now you’re perfect. Yes, Beau, I’ll marry you.”

And he smiled back, before pressing his mouth into hers. For a moment, the staring Alabamans in the lobby faded away, and it was only them returned to the love-struck teenagers they’d once been, but then she remembered, “Oh my God, Colin! We were supposed to meet to talk about him giving Ruth’s House a donation.”